


Two Left For Dead

by smallerluke



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Follow-Up to Old Soldiers, M/M, Reaper76 Week, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 19:57:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9340913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallerluke/pseuds/smallerluke
Summary: Jack Morrison carries a thousand regrets on his shoulders, but a part of him will always believe that he has a home waiting for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Day One of r76 Week: "How We Were" - History/Decay  
> I kind of ran away from the prompt but here we go, a follow-up to Old Soldiers.

_ Get in there, Jack!— _

He remembers fighting down a wave of pain and panic, his body moving on instinct, a name echoing hard around his skull.  _ Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel. _

He doesn’t have time to process it. He’s talking, only half-aware of what he’s saying. Ana’s steps are light at his side. She hugs the rifle to her chest, eye roving around the crowded market. His safe house is in a shitty corner of the city, down a shadowed alley thick with the smells of a restaurant kitchen. Stray cats prowl back into the shadows as they advance. Dimly, he realizes that Ana’s talking, her tone light, conversational. 

Questions bounce around his head. Had she known he was alive? How had she known that—

“Can’t say I’m surprised at how this turned out, Jack,” Ana sighs, “You always were one to rush in. Never one to sit still and weigh the options.”

Jack fishes in his pocket for his keys. She doesn’t say the rest. Doesn’t need to. Jack knows Ana through and through, almost feels her thoughts when her gaze brushes over his visor.  _ Thirty years and you still haven’t learned. _

That much is true, Jack thinks, as he pushes open the door. He apologizes when the thick smell of must hits him, but Ana doesn’t react as she moves into the room to shuck off her coat and lay her rifle to rest beside his desk. The place is a mess, but Ana’s eye moves over it, perfectly neutral. 

A month in Egypt was more than enough time for him to fall back into old habits. He doesn’t have much in the way of clothes, but what he  _ does _ own is strewn across the floor, along with a flurry of documents. He always preferred to lay down on his floor to do paperwork rather than sit at a desk. Gabriel used to hate it when he did that back at their apartment in Zurich, but old habits die hard. 

He lands hard on the cot, pushing aside an old sweater before shouldering out of his jacket. He throws it over where Ana’s tossed her coat, and leans down to pull his sidearm off his thigh. He shoves it under his pillow. Ana watches him like a hawk as he reaches for his visor. He sets it on the nightstand beside a depleted supply of his prescription.

The quiet is welcome. Some of the pain has returned, but Jack refuses to glance at the blood-soaked fabric of his black undershirt. He raises an eyebrow at Ana, questioning, prompting.

Ana takes the hint and lets out a long, sharp sigh before picking her way across the floor. She toes at a piece of paper with her picture circled in red ink. “We should have gone to my safe house,” she says curtly, “Do you even have any food here, Jack?”

Jack nods as he turns toward a door spotted with flaked paint. “Yeah. Should all be halal.”

Ana’s eye wanders away, flicks back, and a smile grows on her face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You were expecting me.”

“Wasn’t sure when I would find you,” Jack grunts, “But it should all be good.”

“That’s not very reassuring, Jack.”

Her smile is wide and teasing, and for a moment Ana is younger, with sleek gray hair and a blue overcoat. The image fades fast, along with her smile, when Jack doesn’t respond. She waves her hands at him with a soft  _ psh _ , the wrinkles under her eye crinkling like wax paper. 

“Will you let me make you something?” Ana moves past him into the kitchen like she owns the place, flinging open cupboards and standing back to inspect the contents. “When’s the last time you ate? Have you been taking care of yourself?”

Jack’s response is immediate. “I’m more worried about you, Ana.”

She is silent as she picks through the cupboards. Jack moves past her to the kettle. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

“Do you have any tea?”

“No. I can go back out—”

“That’s not necessary. Coffee is fine.”

Making coffee is simple. Routine. Soothing, almost, in a distant way. It’s easy to act like neither of them are walking ghosts. Like they hadn’t come face to face with yet another who was supposed to be dead. 

Jack sets the kettle to boil and runs a gloved hand over his brow into his hair. Almost ten years since Gabriel last ran his fingers through his, joking about his receding hairline, kissing his brow nonetheless. He used to be self-conscious about it. Now, he’s far too tired. 

The kitchen is a little hot. There’s no window, just a fan on the table. He walks over and clicks it on. The metal whines, but the push of cool air is worth the sound that grates on his nerves. Gabriel used to keep their apartment too warm for his comfort. Jack used to complain.

Jack wanders back to the kettle as it comes close to a boil. Dishes clink behind him. Ana complains under her breath in Arabic. He understands a few words, knows she’s poking fun at his housekeeping habits, but he doesn’t smile.

Just how many ghosts walked the earth with him?

He wants to pose the question to Ana. It had been luck, really, that led him to the revelation that she was alive. A scrap in a mercenary’s pocket. A mercenary who’d found  _ him _ , somehow, had known who he was. 

He had a list.

Dead, now.

“Ana—”

She interrupts him with a soft  _ shh _ , one finger to her lips. “Coffee first, Jack.” 

Almost ten years since he’d buried his best friend, and she can still see through him like he’s glass. Jack forces a nod and turns back to the kettle as it begins to screech.

Alarms ring in his head, heavy and distant. The echo of boots thrums through the concrete halls deep in the base. Gruff shouts sting at his ears. Gunfire sings. Someone nearby screams. The halls are thick with smoke. The people around him drop, but there’s always someone left to push him forward, even if the only way he wants to move is  _ back _ .

Hands push him out of the smoke, barking commands. An quad-copter waits for them out on the landing pad. He sees it coming, but his mind doesn’t close on it until the moment his eyes move across the Overwatch logo on the quad-copter’s flank. Flecks of blood sting against the orange.

It wasn’t personal. Jack knows this now. Overwatch was rotted through, and he’d been too stubborn to see just how bad it was. Gabriel had known, but Jack hadn’t  _ listened.  _ He’d put more effort into trying to appease Gabriel’s paranoia than he had into looking into his concerns. 

He regrets it more than anything. He’d let it tear their family apart.

Guns turn his way as they approach the quad-copter. His entourage drop around him. Someone pulls him back into the building, and he remembers feeling numb, cold,  _ empty. _

He can’t remember how he ends up in the experimental medical labs, but he does remember the heavy falls of Gabriel’s boots, the sound of labored breathing, and then the rumble of his voice, like thunder:  _ I’ve been looking for you, Morrison. We need to talk. _

The kettle screams. Ana’s voice cuts through his thoughts, pouring over Gabriel’s like water putting out a fire. A hand pushes at his chest. Jack looks down at it, nods, clicks off the kettle. The routine of making coffee comes back to him, along with Ana’s voice.

“...Does this happen often? Please tell me you’re still managing to take your prescription.”

“It’s in the bedroom,” he mutters. He blinks away the last remainders of Gabriel’s face. Thinking of the dead never did him any good, but then again, Gabriel isn’t dead. Gabriel is—

_ Gabriel. _

He hasn’t said the name in almost six years. Part of him—the superstitious minority—always believed that it would cement what happened in Switzerland. Make it real, rather than a dream. It’s all still a blur, and what pieces he has don’t quite fit together.

He pours coffee into two cups and brings them to the table. Ana sets a plate of ful medames down on the table and steps lightly back toward the cupboards. It’s terribly domestic, he thinks, the way they move around each other. Ana doesn’t let him dwell on the thought.

“Do you have any bread?”

“Top of the fridge.”

“Of course. Where I can’t reach it,” Ana huffs.

Jack can feel Ana’s eye on his back as he pulls down a package of bread. She’s looking for a tell, or waiting for him to drop the question. He knows he won’t. He and Ana are similar in a lot of ways. Ana needs a push worse than he does, but it’s not the right time. Jack’s not sure it’ll ever come.

He’d buried her. Spoken at her funeral. He and Gabriel had been the ones to tell Fareeha. To find out she was  _ alive _ —and now, to actually see her in front of him, thinner and older but  _ alive— _ his throat swells, and he fights down the impulse to cry. He’s not that soft anymore.

She asks him to sit down and eat, and he complies. He’d picked up the food with her in mind. She seems to know this, like she seems to know all things.

Ana used to make her own. She’d tried to teach Gabriel, once. 

Food helps to distract him from the pain in his side, but the silence doesn’t help keep his thoughts in place. 

Gabriel knew he was alive.

He wants to pose the question of  _ how _ to Ana, and he can already hear her response:  _ Same way I knew you were. Never one for subtlety. The spotlight always liked you. _

Ten years ago Gabriel would have given his hearty approval, followed up by a joke and a hand on his shoulder. Jack can almost feel the pressure. His chest aches. He forces the food down, chases it with coffee, and pulls his eyes away from Ana—who is still and quiet, now—to stare at an old newspaper headline. 

The words blur. His cheap reading glasses are in the other room.

He hadn’t seen it coming. He should have, that much is obvious. The warning signs had piled up around him, around  _ Gabriel _ , but he’d been too stubborn to realize it. Or maybe too idealistic. Six years was a lot of time to think over all the things he’d done wrong. Every concern shot down. The growing distance between them. The added stress of command as more and more was leaked, and the people asked for his head. Well, they’d gotten it.

If only they’d been able to take his memories with it.

“Do you think he’s okay?”

Jack doesn’t realize he’s spoken aloud until Ana sets down her cup with a  _ clink _ and turns toward him. There’s something in her eye that Jack can’t place. She keeps still, silent, her expression as firm as concrete. He tears his gaze away to stare at the newspaper he can’t read. What little Arabic he knows is conversational. He picks at the corner of the paper.

“Things were...things were bad, Ana. After you—” He can’t bring himself to say the words  _ after I thought you died. _ More accurately:  _ after I left you for dead. _

The stark realization that Gabriel was alive hit him like a truck. Gabriel was  _ alive _ . Somehow it all clicks at once. His mind clears as the small, cramped kitchen comes into focus. Ana’s nails click against her cup. The fan whines and rattles. Outside, he can hear people talking and the purr of old gasoline motors. Something scratches at the door. Probably one of the stray cats he sometimes feeds.

Gabriel was alive, which meant—

He’d left him for dead, too.

Jack’s memory was fragile and incomplete, but he’d  _ known _ . He could still feel Gabriel under his hands, sticky with blood and oil, his eyes open and fogged over. His lungs refused to move. His heart had fallen silent between his ribs.

No. Of course he wasn’t okay. How could he be, if he’d—

The question sits on the edge of his tongue, sharp as a razor. “Was it really him?

Ana avoids his gaze as she lets her hands curl around the cup of coffee.

“Gabriel was my dearest friend, Jack.”

“Ana—”

“I didn’t want to believe it. That he could…” Ana trails off, fingernails clicking against porcelain. “I knew it was him. I could feel it. The same man I trusted with my life. The man I followed without question. The man I entrusted with the care of my daughter, should I die.” Ana runs a hand over her jaw. “He did do that much, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“He was a good man.”

_ Is, _ Jack thinks. The thought is immediate, and somehow, he feels guilty for it. Gabriel is the Reaper. He knows a little about the famed mercenary. Wanted for terrible crimes. In the employ of a terrorist cell he and Gabriel had fought to put down. None of it looks good, but he’d known Gabriel like the back of his hand, would never have thought that—Jack closes his eyes. He elects to chew on his thoughts. The bread is stale and the ful medames doesn’t taste right, but neither of them complain. Ana’s mind is working as hard as his is. He knows this. 

Knows her.

He shifts a hand under the newspaper and pulls out a sheet of blank paper. He has a pen somewhere, too. Jack ignores Ana’s curious stare as he searches among his mess.

He waits until she finishes her coffee before sliding the paper across the table. Ana leans back to cross her arms. “What is this, Jack? Would you like to play x’s and o’s?”

“No.” Jack’s too tired to make a joke and play the game. “Listen. It’s just a suggestion—”

“Jack—”

“You need to write her, Ana.”

He and Ana are similar in a lot of ways. They both push their problems away by worrying about someone else. Now is no different. He thinks they both know it.

“I’ve wanted to for years, Jack.” Ana closes her eye and tucks her face behind her hand. “I must have written thousands already. But what can I say?”

“She’ll understand.”

Ana slowly reaches out for the pen, then flinches away. “She will feel like I abandoned her.”

“You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?”

Her gaze suddenly hardens. Jack feels the answer cut through him.  _ No, Jack. I haven’t.  _

He pushes the sheet of paper across the table. “It’s just a suggestion.”

Ana seems to consider for a moment, eye darting over the pen in her hand. “And what about your son, Jack? Does he know  _ you’re _ still alive?”

He shifts to drape an arm over the back of the chair and feels at his pocket. There’s a picture, age-worn and crumpled, hidden there. He slides it across the table. Ana takes it slowly. 

“He has a family of his own now,” Jack says, “He doesn’t need me.”

_ It would only hurt. _

He sees the same words reflected in Ana’s eye after she glances up from the photograph. He understands. He won’t push her to write that letter. He knows he’s not strong enough to do it himself.

His son lost both his fathers that day. 

Jack feels at the ring hidden under his glove. Ana’s eye catches the movement. She knows, but she stays quiet, pen poised in her hand.

In another life, maybe—

It’s far too late for such thoughts. Jack rises from the table and stops when he hears Ana’s sigh. He knows what’s coming.

“I miss her, Jack. She’s my world. I am so proud of who she has become.” Ana folds over, elbows on her knees, her lip quivering. “She was always so strong. I’m sure she has done well without me.” Ana’s voice cracks. Jack feels her grief tight in his chest, like it’s his own. “She doesn’t need me anymore.”

He drops to one knee and catches her on his shoulder as she chokes on a sob. Ana’s arms wrap tight around his neck, fingers digging into his back. Jack holds her tight as she shakes, holding back on the need to cry. He soothes his hands down her back in even strokes, silent. Ana feels small in his arms, but then again, time has changed them both. 

Ana slowly relaxes against his shoulder. Jack pulls back, one hand on her shoulder, the other reaching for a box of tissues on the table. “You remember that trip we took to Oeschinen Lake?”

Ana blots at her eye with her thumb. Rivers flow down her flushed cheeks. “I’ll never forget,” she chuckles, “Fareeha caught fourteen fish in a row from the same hole in the ice. Rein was so flustered about it. Took it as a personal challenge.”

The memory rises like a tide, slow and sure. They’d all gone together: him, Gabriel, and Isaac, next to Rein, Ana, and Fareeha. Torb had brought his wife and his kids, who were too young for ice fishing, at the time. It was one of the last times they’d all been together. One of the last times everything had truly felt  _ normal. _

He and Gabriel used to talk about a simple life like it was something never meant for them. For a while, Jack had been sure that they were wrong.

He hands Ana a tissue. She works away at her tears, but she’s smiling now, and he mimics the curve of her mouth. “Gabriel wouldn’t stop complaining about the cold,” she chuckles, “Not like that was anything new. He always did hate it in Switzerland.”

Ana falls silent. She folds her hands in her lap, suddenly pensive, and Jack shifts back to sit in his chair. “I should have retired then. Handed you my papers the second we stepped back on base.”

It was far too late for should-haves. Three weeks after that trip he’d failed Ana.

Ana pats her hands down on her thighs. “You look tired, Jack. Go get some sleep. I have some thinking to do.” She doesn’t wait for him to move before she’s poised with the pen over the sheet of paper. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Of course.”

Jack quietly shuts the door behind him. He listens to the scratch of the pen, and then Ana’s low murmur of Arabic, before settling on the cot. His side still aches in a strange, distant way. Everything happened so fast, but he’s achieved what he came to do.

Jack pulls off his gloves and sets them aside. A bar of light falls through the shuttered windows and lands against the gold band on his left hand. He watches the reflection as he twists and turns his wrist, reminded of the first day he’d woken with it on his finger, cold and alien. It’s a part of him, now. A permanent fixture. Even if Gabriel isn’t.

Guilt and loneliness tangle up around his lungs. He twists his ring and tears his eyes away to stare at the water stained walls, instead. Outside the front door he can hear the neighborhood strays scratching at the door. The smells of a local restaurant seep in through the window. 

His imagination is fragile but vivid. He can almost feel the shift of the cot as Gabriel sits next to him, his hand moving over Jack’s. His voice is little more than a puff of air, but Jack understands. He always has. 

_ I’ll always come home to you, Jack. _

Jack knows the return by heart. He’s said the words a thousand times.

_ And I’ll always be waiting. _


End file.
